English Folk Music
My renter Mark has an excellent article on English Folk Music.

Like most other folk forms, English traditional music was, in its heyday, an oral tradition, passed down through generations and reflecting everyday concerns (war, murder, deflowering maidens etc), and also handy for dancing to.

Unlike its Celtic counterparts, English music has had to be brought back from the dead a few times, first by collector Cecil Sharp (and heavy friends like Ralph Vaughan Williams) in the early 20th century. Sharp had been inspired by a chance encounter with some Morris Men in 1899, and instead of running away had been moved to collect thousands of songs and dances, even traveling to the Appalachian mountains to notate tunes from descendants of English settlers

I must show him my record collection sometime